The present invention relates to an image reproducing apparatus that reads the image recorded on originals such as films and reflection originals, performs specified image processing on the resulting data and outputs prints (photographs) having the image processed video data reproduced thereon. The invention also relates to an image reproducing system using said image reproducing apparatus.
Conventionally, the images recorded on photographic films (which are hereunder referred to as "films") and the like, have been printed on photosensitive materials by a technique called "direct exposure" in which light carrying the information of the image on the film is projected onto the photosensitive material to effect areal exposure. Today, this technique is increasingly replaced by digital exposure in which the image information recorded on a film is read photoelectrically, converted to digital image data which in turn is subjected to various kinds of digital image processing and subsequent image recording. Image reproducing devices such as digital photoprinters utilizing this "digital exposure" technique are already in commercial use.
The digital photoprinter is essentially composed of a scanner (image reading device), a controller and a printer (image recording device). In the scanner utilized in the digital photoprinter, reading light issuing from a light source is incident on a film and the projected light carrying the image recorded on the film passes through an imaging lens to be focused on an image sensor such as a CCD sensor, which performs photoelectric conversion to read the image on the film. The resulting data is subjected to various kinds of image processing as required and the processed image information is transferred to the controller as input image data which corresponds to the image recorded on the film.
In the controller, the conditions for various kinds of image processing are typically set in accordance with the input image data transferred from the scanner and, thereafter, the desired digital image processing is performed on the image data, and after other conditions such as exposure conditions have been determined, output image data having a pixel number determined by the density of recording pixels and the print size is transferred to the printer. Image processing is not the only function of the controller and it performs other jobs such as the overall control and management of the digital photoprinter.
In the printer, if it is in an apparatus of a type that utilizes exposure by scanning with light beams, the latter are modulated in accordance with the image data supplied from the controller and the thus modulated light beams are deflected in the main scanning direction as the photosensitive material is transported in an auxiliary scanning direction which is perpendicular to the main scanning direction, whereby the photosensitive material is exposed to form a latent image, which is then subjected to development and other processing in accordance with the type of the photosensitive material, thereby producing finished prints which reproduce the image recorded on the film.
In the digital photoprinter, the film is read photoelectrically and the exposure conditions are determined on the basis of color/density correction performed by data processing. Therefore, only a short time is taken in the exposure of a single image. In addition, the exposure time is constant if the image size is the same and, hence, it is possible to perform more rapid printing than in the conventional areal exposure. As a further advantage, editing such as image synthesis and division and image processing such as color/density adjustments can be freely performed to output finished prints which have been subjected to flexible editing and image processing in accordance with a specific application.
What is more, the image information in the finished prints can be stored on a recording media such as a magnetooptical disk and, hence, in a case where extra printing is desired, there is no need to read the film again nor is it necessary to re-determine the exposure conditions and this provides rapidity and ease in the operation of extra printing. It should also be mentioned that in terms of resolution, color/density reproducibility and other points, prints that feature almost complete reproduction of the image information recorded on films and the like can be output in the digital photoprinter, although this has been difficult to accomplish by prints produced by the conventional direct exposure.
A problem with image reproducing apparatus such as the digital photoprinter described above is that the image data for a given original image is subjected to specified image processing almost automatically, so it is difficult to perform the image processing desired by an individual user. In other words, the user does not directly perform the desired image processing on the image data for a given original image and, hence, the output print is not necessarily finished to the preference of a specific user.